“No one. I haven’t felt followed here at all.”

“Well, I’d still act fast when you get home. Do whatever you need to do before they find Sam and pull him in.”

“Mags,” I said. “Can I ask you for a favor as a friend and not a lawyer?”

“What is it?”

“Can you get on the Internet and see if there are any flights from Panama to O’Hare this afternoon?”

Silence. “As a friend? Yeah, I can do that.” We heard the clack, clack, clack of her fingers on a keyboard.

“Three hours,” she said, naming an airline.

One more look between Sam and me, and this time I could read him perfectly.

“Let’s go for it,” I said.

Sam thanked Maggie and hung up the phone.

I started to turn, but I heard Sam say, “Wait.”

I stopped, standing in the doorway of a foreign apartment in a foreign country, and with my fiancé coming toward me. He was foreign, too, and yet oh so familiar.

Sam touched my hair, then my cheek. “The airport isn’t far. We’ve got a few minutes.”

“Meaning?”

He said nothing. He drew his fingers down and brushed them over my mouth. I could barely breathe with his proximity. I’d always found him gorgeous. He’d always turned me on. And now we stared at each other with an electric intensity we hadn’t known before. The highs and the low-low-lows of the last couple of weeks crashed together in my mind. They combusted with the fact that I’d now found Sam and with the other fact that I might lose him again if I couldn’t live with the way he’d handled the situation, if we couldn’t get over the fact that I’d been thinking of pulling the plug on the wedding. The uncertainty of it all, with the sun now blazing through the glass doors, made for a moment so powerful that everything in the world stopped. The truth, if we admitted it, was that neither of us knew whether we would get such a moment again.

Sam cupped my cheeks with his hands. I felt the calluses on his fingers from playing guitar. I smelled the chlorine and the sun from the bare skin of his chest. I felt his breath as he slowly-so slowly-moved his face to mine.

He kissed me. And it was as if he’d never kissed me before. His lips were softer than I remembered. His tongue was like a pillow. Our mouths touched, as light as ocean spray, but then he bit my bottom lip, and I felt the danger that was now Sam, that was part of him no matter what might happen. That danger made me kiss him harder, made me suck his tongue into my mouth. We grabbed at each other, clutching at arms, ass, shoulders.

I stopped for a second and stared at those martini-olive eyes fringed by brown lashes-different than I remembered and yet the same. There was so much to say, and yet I wanted nothing but silence, to feel nothing but the weight of Sam’s body.

I pushed him toward the raft, and I fell onto him.

70

The Chicago night was gray and cold when I came outside the international terminal at O’Hare. I looked up at the orange streetlights, at the spitting of rain that misted against them. I got in the cab line. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sam, wearing a baseball cap pulled low, getting in the same line. Alec Thornton’s passport hadn’t been flagged. The feds must not have known about it. We spent the flight in different seats, never looking at each other, just as we’d decided. Feeling him near, and yet not having him, was something I’d gotten used to over the last few weeks.

In the cab, I asked the driver to sit at the curb for a moment. He grumbled that the cops would make him move soon, but he did as I asked. A minute later, I turned around and saw Sam getting in another cab.

“I’m ready,” I said to the driver. I gave him my address and hoped I wouldn’t be going there just yet.

As we pulled away and onto the Kennedy, I glanced behind me and saw that Sam’s cab was following as planned. It was ten o’clock at night, but because it was Friday, there was a healthy stream of downtown-bound traffic. The cab carved slowly but steadily through the light rain, the tires making a swishing noise.

I pulled out my cell phone and called Shane. It rang, but no answer. I sent him a text. It’s Izzy. Need to see you ASAP.

Time went by. I spent it gathering details of everything we’d learned in my head. As if preparing for a trial, I collected each tiny bit of evidence, wrapping my mind around the places where there were assumptions instead of facts. The biggest assumption, but one I felt nearly certain of now, was that Shane was responsible for his dad’s death. It was the logical guess all along, but the fact that Forester had believed it, too, and had gone so far as to ask Sam to take such strong actions, solidified it. Forester had rarely been wrong. He’d suspected Chaz and Walter, too. Maybe they were all in on it together. If so, it would be Shane who would crumble first from the pressure.

I kept looking at my phone. No response from Shane. I decided to make another phone call that had been on my mind. I dialed Lucy DeSanto.

“Hello?” she answered, her voice wary.

“Hi, it’s Izzy.”

Silence.

“I heard about Michael.”

“When he was getting taken away he said that it was you who brought him down. He said he thought you had gotten into his computer.”

I cleared my throat. I didn’t know what to say. Mayburn and I had never discussed whether you could talk to a subject after an investigation had closed. I hadn’t wanted to have that conversation with him, I realized now, because I very much wanted to call Lucy and see if she was all right.

“How have you been?” I said.

She was silent a moment, acknowledging my unspoken admission. “I’m scared.”

I felt a wave of guilt.

“But you know what?” she continued. “I feel hopeful for the first time in a long time.”

“Why?” I asked, surprised.

“Because Michael was a nightmare to live with. He was abusive. Not physically. Well, just a few times, but mostly it was just this constant verbal abuse, always telling me how stupid I was and how I was messing up. I could never do anything right in his eyes.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“When he got taken away, it was the most scared I’ve ever been. But as each minute passes, I realize how nice it is to not have him around. I feel like I can breathe again. I hate to say this, but I’m almost hoping he gets denied bail.”

“Wow.”

“I know. It’s weird.”

“Well, I called to say I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t apologize.”

“I really do like you, Lucy. A lot.”

“Thanks. So, is Grady really your husband?”

I could hear Mayburn screaming not to admit anything. “No.”

She laughed. “I could tell.”

“How?”

“I saw the way he was looking at you. Like a kid in a candy store. No one looks at their wife like that, even if you’ve only been married a few years.”

I wanted to say, You should have seen him later when I let him in the store. I felt a wave of confusion then. What would I do about Grady, now that Sam was home? An even better question, what would I do about Sam?

“I’d like it if we could be friends, Lucy. You know, apart from all this stuff.”

She was quiet a second. “I have a lot to sort out right now.”

“Of course.”

The skyline of the city came into view-the Sears Tower and the Hancock glowing gold behind a swirling fog. My phone trilled to let me know I’d received a text.

“I’ve got to run,” I said, “but I’ll touch base in a week or two, if that’s okay. Good luck, Lucy.”

I hung up and scrolled to my text. It was from Shane-What’s up?

Need to see you, I replied.

It’s late. Tomorrow?

It’s about Sam. I know where he is.

And then nothing. A few minutes later the cab got off the highway at North Avenue and sped east toward the city. I looked over my shoulder and saw Sam’s cab still trailing.

I’m at my condo downtown, came Shane’s next text. Should we meet somewhere?